From diamonds to iPhones, RodeoHouston’s lost and found full of interesting treasure

Baby strollers stored at the Rodeo Houston lost and found at Reliant Center. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Baby strollers stored at the Rodeo Houston lost and found at Reliant Center. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle

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Shoe singles stored at the Rodeo Houston lost and found at Reliant Center. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Shoe singles stored at the Rodeo Houston lost and found at Reliant Center. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle

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Lost items are catalogued and numbered at the Rodeo Houston lost and found office located at Reliant Center room 102. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Lost items are catalogued and numbered at the Rodeo Houston lost and found office located at Reliant Center room 102. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle

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Sets of keys stored in bins at the lost and found at Reliant Center room 102. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Sets of keys stored in bins at the lost and found at Reliant Center room 102. Saturday, March 8, 2014. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle

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From diamonds to iPhones, RodeoHouston's lost and found full of interesting treasure

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On the first floor of Reliant Center sits RodeoHouston’s lost and found, nestled among the endless sausage and cobbler booths. This is where everything that you lose at the rodeo, even your kids, will end up.

That is, if your fellow Houstonians are nice enough to turn them in. Of course, if you lose your kid and someone doesn’t alert the authorities, that’s called kidnapping.

Each morning this meeting room is humming with activity, with members of the rodeo’s directions and assistance committee cataloging every pair of sunglasses, earrings, each iPhone, and each sweater that comes into their possession. That means anything, even two quarters, if that is what is turned in.

Thursday night 58,000 people came to the rodeo to see Reba belt out Fancy, and this morning a fancier diamond engagement ring showed up inside an envelope in this office.

“That’s one way to break it off, just lose the ring,” laughs Debbie Kasper, who has been working the rodeo’s lost and found for 14 years. She started back when it was still inside the Astrodome.

Kasper is game to show off most every piece of lost article. All of the items are cataloged and then sorted into bins in lockers when they come in. Lost coats are hung up on a clothing rack, strollers are folded and stowed away on a bookcase.

“We get lots of strollers. Even those ones that hold twins,” said Kasper. They’ve become adept at folding up strollers in the office. Right now, there are two battered cowboy hats on the shelf, but they don’t look like anything someone might miss.

The treasure trove is the collection of car keys, eye wear, purses, clutches, rodeo badges and cellphones, all collected since the cook-off opened Feb. 27.

“We have to log everything in. If it is a driver’s license we put it in the mail, and if it is a credit card we call the credit company and they let us know what to do,” says Kasper.

The keys are the astounding thing. Most every make is represented.

“How did these people get home?” Kasper asks. There are car keys, house keys, alarm fobs. An entire life on a key ring. Reading glasses galore sit in one box. Someone went home without a brand new pair of Ariat boots that night. They were still in their box inside Reliant Stadium.

“Most people just don’t think to come by and check for their lost things,” said Kasper. When purses get lost, she thinks that some people just write it off as a loss and order new ID and credit cards. There are one or two expensive clutches in storage.

The rodeo team sorts all the cellphones by brand. Right now there are a handful of iPhones, which all have security locks on them. When they don’t, the team will look for names or ID on the phone. They’ve even contacted some people on Facebook.

There is a bag of IDs that have been left behind and haven’t been mailed out yet. Lots of young faces, possibly new drinkers.

Right now, the belle of the lost-and-found ball is the diamond engagement ring, which looks to have cost someone a pretty penny. They don’t want to go into great detail about the ring, lest a few dozen people who lost a diamond engagement ring show up to fraudulently acquire some new bling.

They’ve found pocket knives, but never guns, says Kasper. Right now there is a menacing switchblade in a lost and found tub. The knife looks like it has seen better days. You can bring a handgun into RodeoHouston if you have a concealed handgun license, and you have to tell law enforcement at the door you are carrying. The weirdest thing that her fellow lost and found associate, Dru Pease, has had come into their office was a pair of false teeth. To their knowledge, no one ever came to retrieve them.

Which begs the question, how did they eat their turkey leg?

Things that never get picked up go to the rodeo’s main office for storage. Items like clothing that go unclaimed get donated to charity. Kasper has never seen any large amounts of cash turned in, which is expected, though some honest children have surprised them.

“We’ve had kids turn in cash, which speaks well for their parents,” she said.

In one corner of the office is an area for lost children to stay until a parent comes and gets them. There are stuffed animals, DVDs, crayons, and coloring books to keep them entertained while their parents go into hysterics outside looking for them. There were no lost kids in their custody on Friday morning. It was a tad early for missing kids.

The longest time a child has spent in here to Kasper’s knowledge was six hours. When some of us lose our cellphones we flip out, and these people have lost a human being for six hours and don’t think twice, it seems. Kasper said most kids aren’t here but a few minutes before they are tearfully claimed. They don’t take in lost kids 12 years old and over.

“They can usually fend for themselves,” says Kasper.

If the show is about to close up for the night, the child is handed over to the police who in turn contact CPS, but that has never happened, according to Kasper. Some days are busier than others for lost children.

“The most kids get lost on Tejano Day,” said Kasper. “They’re always good kids and we have some office workers that are bilingual so that helps a lot.”

One kid came in one rodeo season more than once to the lost child area. He already had the routine down pat, right down to what DVDs he could watch and what juice they served. He was calling the shots.

“That may or may have not been an accident, him being here so much,” says Pease.